While programming in C#, I stumbled upon a strange language design decision that I just can't understand.
So, C# (and the CLR) has two aggregate data types: struct (value-type, stored on the stack, ...

Starting from this wikipedia page, and exploring the linked pages, I have tried to find the origins of the word "array" in the context of computer science. I have so far come nowhere, and am pursuing ...

I recently had to investigate quite long list of user agent names from different devices, and what surprised me is that all those strings begin with 'Mozilla/5.0'. There had to be something special ...

There is something I've never understood about Smalltalk, since reading about it in a book when I was a child, tho' I have never used it "in anger". I know that it is turtles-all-the-way-down, that ...

I mean descend as in languages who's original compiler/interpreter was written in C or in a language that descends from C.
If you don't count assembly, the only thing that comes to my mind is B. Are ...

I was reading a really great Bjarne Stroustrup's article where he exposes some C++ myths.
I look at code that focus my attention, because I wouldn't know that C++ supports this kind of expressions. ...

I have two callbacks for WM_MOVE and WM_MOVING. Oddly enough, WM_MOVE is being called while dragging the window. I expected WM_MOVE to be called only when I'm done dragging the window.
MSDN says that ...

Is there a single timeline-style resource available showing the history of the modules available in different versions of Python?
I'd like to, for instance, easily determine which version of Python ...

I am doing a research essay on the history of programming languages, and I was wondering, why did programmers ever write their programs on punch cards? Didn't computer screens and keyboards already ...

If you search for examples of creating a seeded (pseudo)Random number generator, you will run into stuff like this (specific example http://indiegamr.com/generate-repeatable-random-numbers-in-js/):
...

Why did the creators of the Internet Protocol decide to use IP addresses to identify a particular computer?
Why not just have a unique ID assigned to each computer upon manufacture, then use that ID ...

In 1989 Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas wrote a Hacker's test taking the form of a quiz with many insider jokes, as “Do you eat slime-molds?”
I am considering the following series:
0015 Ever ...

I have been working with laravel (PHP) recently, and there is an option when using their fluent ORM to define where clauses using closures. This gives us two, functionally equivalent, ways to specify ...

So, this is pure curiosity. I've heard the term 3rd party, as in, "3rd party library" for quite a while.
I wonder why we say 3rd and not 2nd (or 4th)?
Who are the first and second parties and where ...

The first compiler was written by Grace Hopper in 1952 while the Lisp interpreter was written in 1958 by John McCarthy's student Steve Russell. Writing a compiler seems like a much harder problem than ...

The purpose of the Accept header from the client is to tell the server what kind of data it will accept as a response to its request. We can set this header in asynchronous HTTP calls in Javascript, ...

As far as I know, C is by far the most widely used language for low level stuff such as systems programming and embedded. Sometimes assembly is used, but that's when you really need to be close to the ...

First ATMs performed tasks like a cash dispenser, they were offline machines which worked with punch cards impregnated with Carbon and a 6-digit PIN code.
Maximum withdrawal with a card was 10 pounds ...

In the 1970s, a man called Bill Gates developed an interpreter for BASIC: the Altair BASIC. Per my understanding, he was able to persuade the guy in charge of a microcomputer company to include the ...